Spring Framework 2.0 RC4 has been released. This is the last release candidate before Spring 2.0 final, and you may find out more about it from the release announcement itself as well as the JIRA issue list for a complete list of changes in this release.

Possibly the most important thing to watch out for is that this release introduces versioned file/location names for the 2.0 DTD and Schemas (XSDs). This was necessary since the XML bean definition format was significantly enahnced for 2.0, but 1.2.x users still need to be able to refer to the 1.2.8 DTD. Here is an example of using the 2.0 "beans" schema (2.0 ships with a number of other new schemas as well, representing various special namespaces…

We are pleased to announce that Spring 2.0 RC4 has been released.  Download | Documentation | Changelog

This is the last release candidate before Spring 2.0 final.  RC4 includes many further bug fixes and refinements in various areas, as well as minor new features (for example in the JMS support). Please see the changelog and JIRA issue list for all the details.  The most notable changes include...

New and Noteworthy

• This release introduces versioned file names for the 2.0 DTD and XSDs. Please adapt your bean definition files if they build on the 2.0 XSDs on or 2.0-specific DTD features.  For example:
  

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
            xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
            xsi:schemaLocation="
                http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
                http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd">

    <!-- Define your beans here -->

</beans>

• As you would expect, the Spring 1.2 DTD is still fully supported under its established spring-beans DTD file name.

• 2.0 XML configuration elements and attributes are now fully documented for each schema we support.  Special thanks to Rick Evans for his contribution in this area.
  

• Apache OJB support (org.springframework.orm.ojb) is no longer shipped with the core Spring distribution as of this release. It is now available from the Spring Modules project.

• Spring's JPA support is now fully tested against Oracle TopLink Essentials v2 b16 as well as Hibernate EntityManager 3.2.0 CR2. Our extensive integration test suite fully passes for both of those JPA providers now. We are currently in the process of covering OpenJPA in the same fashion.
  

We look forward to your feedback on this release.

Enjoy,

Juergen Hoeller
Lead of Spring Framework Development

Can you guess what it is? If you guessed a Maven bundle/build for Spring you win. Come see me at The Spring Experience in December and we'll share a frosty beverage as your prize.

Mea Culpa

Status

That said, it's not quite time for celebration. Converting the last two projects (Spring and Spring Web Flow) are non-trivial tasks (just take a look at Better Builds with Maven if you don't believe me). As such, the conversion is not something that we really want to do this close to the major 2.0 and 1.0 releases. What I can tell you is that the conversion is a goal scheduled for after the releases.

So what's the plan?

Then what can I, the user, do in the meantime?

Anything else you want to know about?

It started out as a small thing. Just a hunch of mine that Spring and OSGi should sit together very well. The idea was that by enabling Spring applications to be deployed in an OSGi runtime, we could bring better modularity, versioning, runtime deployment and update capabilities to Spring applications. It's a project I never really advertised; I just started experimenting, talking to a few people, and writing some early prototype code.

It turns out that a lot of people seem to be interested in Spring and OSGi. We have a collaboration ongoing with representatives from BEA, Oracle, IBM, Eclipse, the OSGi Alliance, and several others to build a shared model of how Spring support for OSGi should look, and how we can make it easy to build enterprise applications on the OSGi runtime. The most recent version of the specification is attached to Spring JIRA issue 1802. Here's a direct link to the specification text…

As most of you know, one of the big improvements in Spring 2.0 is the addition of the AspectJ pointcut language and better integration with AspectJ in general. While I think everyone believes that this will be a great benefit in the long run, it has led to some issues. We've found that there are certain behaviors that Spring AOP has always done, that AspectJ has never done.

One of the big issues that cropped up was the behavior of Before advice. If you've used Spring AOP in Spring 1.x you probably know that Spring allows you to change argument values before they are passed to the target…

Spring - here to stay for a long time I visit many clients and speak to even more on a day-to-day basis. This includes existing Interface21 clients as well as companies that are interested in our products and services across Europe. I have noticed a recurring theme in the conversations I am having: Spring is here, and it is here to stay.

Over the last year I have witnessed executive-level decisions that have standardized Spring throughout the fabric of leading Enterprise Java development firms. Just two weeks ago I asked one of my clients - a Java unit manager at one of Europe's largest…

Dear Spring Community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring LDAP version 1.1 has been released. This is the first release of the library as a Spring Framework sub project. Download | Documentation | API

About Spring LDAP
Spring LDAP is a Java library for simplifying LDAP operations, based on the pattern of Spring's JdbcTemplate. The framework relieves the user of the burden of looking up and closing contexts, looping through NamingEnumerations, encoding/decoding values and filters, and more.

The LdapTemplate class encapsulates all the plumbing work involved in traditional LDAP programming, such as creating, looping through NamingEnumerations, handling Exceptions and cleaning up resources. This leaves the programmer to handle the important stuff - where to find data (DNs and Filters) and what do do with it (map to and from domain objects, bind, modify, unbind, etc.), in the same way that JdbcTemplate relieves the programmer of all but the actual SQL and how the data maps to the domain model.

In addition to this, Spring LDAP provides Exception translation from NamingExceptions to DataAccessExceptions, as well as several utilities for working with filters, LDAP paths and Attributes.

Spring-LDAP requires J2SE 1.4. J2SE 1.4 is required for building. J2EE 1.4 (Servlet 2.3, JSP 1.2) is required for running the example.

Where to start
Download the distribution from the link above. The distribution contains extensive JavaDoc documentation as well as full reference documentation and a sample application illustrating different ways to use Spring LDAP.

Home
The permanent home of Spring LDAP is at http://www.springframework.org/ldap.

History
Spring LDAP is based on the SourceForge LdapTemplate project. Users of LdapTemplate are advised to switch to Spring LDAP.

Mattias Arthursson & Ulrik Sandberg
Spring LDAP Project Team

Lately it seems like I've been focusing on creating Spring XML namespaces. It's been a lot of trial and error (both on the XSD and Spring side) to get a good pattern for creating parsers. One of the biggest confusions that I ran into was the AbstractBeanDefinitionParser hierarchy. At this point it isn't documented especially well (but there is a JIRA for it, so it'll be fixed before GA), so I'll give you a rundown of your choices, what they're good for and how to use them.

AbstractBeanDefinitionParser choices

• AbstractBeanDefinitionParser
  • AbstractSingleBeanDefinitionParser
    • AbstractSimpleBeanDefinitionParser

I'm going to start at the most specific and work towards the most general to show how to gain more power when you need it. If you want to skip the examples and see the summary, check here…

Hey all!

This is my first post since I joined Interface21 last month. My previous blog is now officially deprecated and I won't be updating it anymore.

So what is the subject of my first post (except to introduce myself)?  Validation logic.  It won't be a walkthrough of how to perform validation in the Spring framework, rather it will discuss a particular bug bear of mine :)

In particular, I would like to discuss exactly what should go into validation logic.  It seems to be a no-brainer answer; "logic to validate the specified data".  OK, that is a no-brainer but read on :). As you know, the Spring framework provides a nice abstraction layer for your validation, via the Errors and Validator interfaces.  In particular the Validator is where you apply your business specific validation rules to your populated domain object.  Spring's excellent binding support is responsible for updating your domain model…